Long Beach State’s right-handed pitcher walked behind the Blair Field mound on a Saturday afternoon last season, his steps punctuated by his hand resetting the cap on his head several times before bending over and holding the resin bag like a live grenade he desperately wanted to get rid of.

He scanned his outfielders but his eyes never settled on anyone, least of all anyone in the Dirtbag dugout, until the pitching coach came out and asked him for the ball.

The Dirtbags were playing Cal Poly in a game critical to their scant postseason hopes. They had a 7-2 lead after two innings. Thompson retired the first hitter in the third. He walked a batter, hit another, and a single scored one and the runners advanced to second and third. He got the second out of the inning and needed one more to exit the inning with minimal damage.

Instead, Poly’s number seven hitter doubled and the number eight singled. Big lead gone, and so was Thompson, the shortest effort in his two seasons.

This was the consummate moment of frustration in a season that didn’t go the way anyone expected.

Thompson went 4-7 with an earned run average of 5.61 in his 14 starts, and he was pummeled for 18 runs in his last three over 13-plus innings.

The reason why may be as simple as Troy Buckley changing his address.

There’s a fact of life that is often overlooked in college sports-every time a head or assistant coach moves on, they often take with them the confidence of someone they left behind.

That’s the best explanation for Thompson. He and Buckley had known each other for five years when the youngster was starring on summer and travel teams. He came to Long Beach State to learn under Buckley, and even left his senior season at Wilson behind so he could enroll early.

Then Buckley was offered a once-in-a-lifetime job with the Pittsburgh Pirates. The affable, polite and talented Thompson handled his departure well at first, but there was a growing sense of frustration over time, finally boiling over in his last three starts if 2009.

Needless to say, Thompson is overjoyed that Buckley is back as the Dirtbags pitching coach for 2010, with the season starting in 10 days (Feb. 19, Pepperdine). But one doesn’t lose his confidence overnight, and it doesn’t necessarily come back any quicker.

Since returning, Buckley has worked with Thompson not on his mechanics as much as his baseball maturity.

“Jake was a big name in youth baseball for a long time, on everyone’s radar, and as a result the expectations were set pretty high,” Buckley said. “When they’re not met, that’s when frustration occurs.

“Since the fall, we’ve worked to speed up his maturing process. Guys who develop fast are mature about their work, are accountable. Jake is different than Jered Weaver, Cesar Ramos or an Andrew Carpenter. Those guys could handle the process well internally. Jake is more external. He’s an engaging, bright kid who speaks his mind.”

Would things have been different if Buckley hadn’t left?

“Probably, to a certain degree,” he said, “There’s something about the security a young man feels, a comfort zone, so take that away and things can change. But what I’ve reminded Jake is that he is going to be dealing with this kind of change the rest of his baseball career.

“He will go into pro ball and will likely have to deal with five different coaches and three different pitching coordinators the first two seasons. You have to become your own coach, and accountable to yourself.”

Buckley doesn’t doubt Thompson’s ability to do this. Thompson is ecstatic that Buckley is back, but he’s taken the mental lesson to heart as much as any changes Buck has made in his mechanics.

“I didn’t step up the way you need to on any level of sports,” Thompson said before a recent practice. “This is a rebirth for me, a new slate with coach, but I obviously have a long way to go. The best thing is that I know it.

“You need to be better every step you take. I was expected to be more mature as a pitcher regardless of who was the coach. That forced me to look at myself a lot in the offseason.”

Thompson and former pitching coach Jon Strauss, who left to become the pitching coach at Pepperdine before the Buckley return became a possibility, weren’t on the same page often last season. The pitcher didn’t always agree with the pitching plan and differed with Strauss about pitch selection.

“I thought we became real predictable,” he said. “After awhile, I felt like hitters were saying `We know what you’re going to throw.’ That was especially so the second time round in the lineup.

“There were times when I said `Please, don’t ask me to throw that pitch.’ I didn’t want to cross (Strauss) up, but sometimes I felt I knew it wasn’t the right pitch and the batter was waiting for it.”

In a recent intrasquad game, Buckley felt Thompson was having issues with his fastball control. So he told him to call his own game the next two innings. “And he threw well and had more movement on his fastball,” Buckley said.

“Sometimes it’s good to factor in a little control for the player as a motivational thing. But he only gets that as long as he understands the process and does what we ask of him.”

Buckley has also worked with Thompson on his mechanics, like the angle of his delivery so he can hide the ball better from batters, and not over-rotating trying to put something extra on a fastball.

They’ve also worked hard on getting more strikes with his breaking ball.

“Pitching to contact is a good thing,” Buckley said. “It’s what we want. But first you need to keep the ball down, and then you can start working inside or outside. When you can do that, it’s then easier to throw the fastball up with control.

“You want to pitch downhill.” That’s a reasonable goal for a young man whose first two seasons were decidedly uphill.